


to hell with the plan

by notavodkashot



Series: FFXV one shots [20]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen, Good Omens-style reimagining of canon, Messengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 14:10:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19401925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot
Summary: The Plan is stupid. All Nyx needed to do was convince Cor that it was also Unjust.





	to hell with the plan

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @nyx_aeternum as part of my my 100 follower milestone prompt drive, over at twitter!

“Explain to me again,” Nyx said, face buried in his hands, lest he had to withstand the torture that was Cor’s dead-eyed stare, “how the hell did you fuck it up this badly?” 

Cor had the gall to look sullen at him, holding the bundle of clone baby daemon monster in his arms and looking put out. 

“I’m an angel,” he muttered, the fantastical git, shrugging like that explained anything. 

Which, to be fair, it sort of did. He was the smite-y kind of angel, the sort that brought down fire and brimstone and all that good, righteous divine wrath, but managed to diplomatically justify it by appealing to the swift and decisive application of justice. Clone baby daemons were not, on the whole, the sort of thing that invoked divine wrath. At least not on themselves, since they didn’t make themselves. Rather, as Nyx had expected when he’d given Cor that tidbit of information, their creators were the ones who were usually smote down with gusto, for general crimes against humanity and also being mostly dicks. 

He’d failed to consider the babies, to be honest. 

“You’re an idiot,” Nyx deadpanned, rubbing a hand over his forehead, as if he could smother away the frown persistently stuck there, “listen, we’ve got what? Twenty years? Before this whole prophesied shebang goes down? We don’t have time to be playing house! We’ve got a Chosen King to keep safe and sound and mostly not maniacally righteous or downright monstrously evil.” 

“Nyx,” Cor said, voice quiet and poignant and Nyx hated when he did that, he did, because it made it very hard to not give him what he wanted, be it sordid gossip about the comings and goings down Below, or just to let him have the last slice of cheesecake in the fridge. 

It was terrible. 

“Oh, very well,” Nyx hissed, bitter like a wet cat, but properly thwarted, as usual. “But I refuse to babysit him.” 

* * *

In the beginning – but not The Beginning, which Nyx mostly remembered for the general boredom and the lack of Cor’s half-hearted attempts at a beard – it had been fine. They were ancient creatures who had spent… well, all the time, amongst humans. They could handle a baby. Even if it was a clone baby daemon monster that cried and whined and liked to puke all over Nyx’s perfectly serviceable boots at every chance he got, the little maniac. 

They had, as the vernacular went, got this. 

Then, the baby’s teeth started growing in – which, ew – and then they’d very much not got this. 

“You’re stupid,” Nyx told the baby, fairly often and always nowhere Cor could hear, which usually entailed sitting on a roof somewhere with a ball of disaster sprawled shamelessly on his chest, blowing spit bubbles at him and being, in general, nothing short of a baby about things. “The worst. Look at you, you’re an embarrassment to daemon-kind.” 

The baby, whom Cor had named Prompto out of some sort of pun he refused to explain but which Nyx could divine the vague shape of enough to realize it was terrible, giggled in delight and drooled a massive spot all over Nyx’s shirt. 

Because of course it fucking did. 

* * *

“Everything happens for a reason,” Cor said, as he was wont to do, because to outright gloat about things would be indecorous for someone of his standing. 

Nyx read what he meant and replied exactly as one would, to such provocations, with utmost maturity and poise. 

He also flipped him the bird. 

“Oh, shut it,” Nyx muttered, when the soft, raspy sound of Cor’s viper hiss of a laugh reached his ears, and instead concentrated on watching the playground. 

There, sitting in a mound of sand filled with far too many evils for Nyx to contemplate before lunch, sat the Crown Prince of Lucis and Cor’s disaster rescue of a pet project, building castles and giggling in delight. 

* * *

It wasn’t Nyx fault he’d fallen. 

He hadn’t made the choice that led to that particular declaration of war – though he was, admittedly, kinda good at stoking up the fires of war – and which had unceremoniously ended with his master taking an extended nap inside a volcano – he wasn’t _dead_ , obviously, Gods didn’t _die_ , that was the whole point – and his fellow host… well, lost. 

Messengers didn’t choose the gods they served. Messengers didn’t choose to love their masters. They were made and it was just… well, that was just how it was. 

It wasn’t Nyx’s fault the God that made him, pulled him into being out of the deepest, burning heart of their star, and gave him human form to best carry his will onto humans… was Ifrit. 

Oh, there were others, of course, who looked human enough and wandered about the human world, what with their masters having decided collectively to fuck off for a few centuries, after coming uncomfortably close to blowing up the whole wide world. But they hadn’t been made as close to human as Nyx was. They chose to look the part, and some of them even got the mannerisms right – Cor had gone as far as befriend several of the Lucian Kings, sitting at their tables and their councils and whispering righteous justice to their ears – and some who didn’t even bother to try – Gentiana creeped the shit out of Nyx, and it wasn’t just because he was contractually obligated to be biased. But that was just skin deep. 

Dig a little deeper, and the stripes started to show, in Cor, lightning and divine wrath scattered in dark purple markings all over the expanse of white fur he wasn’t showing. Nyx didn’t even remember what was hiding behind Gentiana’s soft, deadly smiles, only that he didn’t like it and definitely didn’t need to see it ever again. 

Nyx was… just Nyx. 

He’d been made human enough to understand what it meant, when he passed on the fire to the insignificant creatures huddling inside their caves and fearing the wrath of the Gods. 

He’d been made human enough to understand what it meant, when they became arrogant Lords and Ladies and tried to free themselves from the yoke of the Gods by whose mercy they were allowed to exist. 

He’d been human enough that when they took his master from his crypt, he looked away and only realized what was set in motion when the scourge sank deep into Ifrit’s skin and left him little more than a docile pet, set to play his part. 

He should have tried to free him, should have shown himself, screaming fury and burning outrage, and torn away the shackles of corruption. Or died trying, at least. Messengers could die, torn to pieces, like so many, during the war. 

Instead, he’d found Cor. 

He’d sat with him in the rain, watching as Cor basked in the downpour far away from Insomnia and its claustrophobic Wall, and learned all about The Plan. It was a lousy fucking plan, in Nyx’s opinion. It hadn’t taken much to make Cor admit he thought so too. Not just enough, for Cor or the hand that held Cor’s leash, that. 

But it was Bahamut’s plan, and who the hell even went against Bahamut’s wishes? 

Well, Ifrit, for one. Which meant Nyx. Which meant awkward, circular bickering with Cor, because just because something had to be done, it didn’t mean it had to be done by Nyx. Right. 

Right. 

“It’d be so much easier,” Nyx said, watching the boys asleep on the living room’s couch, snoring away their woes as on the TV screen their game had long gone into screensaver mode, “if we’d just kill him. No Chosen King, no Plan.” 

Cor didn’t bother to argue. He didn’t have to. They’d argued about it, once, shortly after the boy was born and all that goddamn prophecy and destiny manifested like miasma all around them. It wouldn’t be Just, to kill the boy to save the world. Not any fairer than letting Bahamut kill him to save the world. But Nyx was a creature of bad habits and he clung to them, when he didn’t have anything better to do. 

“Wouldn’t be heroic,” Cor muttered, lips twitching just so. 

Nyx considered stabbing him in the face. Remembered that would probably end up poorly for him, if he did. 

“Shut up,” he glowered instead. 

Lots of fat good it’d done, being a Hero to mankind. He knew better now. He knew what happened when the fire spread. 

“The Kingsglaive,” Cor said after a moment, eyebrows arched, “could use a hero.” 

Nyx turned away, took a step, then another, and he was no longer in Insomnia, but back in the safety and comfort of the deepest pit in Ravatogh. He looked down at the steady flow of molten rock beneath his feet, the fire that forever churned away in the depths. 

“Fuck you!” He yelled at it, at him, at himself. 

He’d do it, anyway. Of course he would, why else would Cor tell him? 

Damn. 

* * *

Heroes were the reason mankind had moved past hiding in corners, killing each other when the world itself wasn’t killing them. Heroes were hope and burning passion, the ones who inspired. The ones who gave ordinary people the courage to try and be extraordinary. 

The Plan said Insomnia had to fall, burned to the ground to give the Chosen King the impetus to carry out every step required. Loss turned into sacrifice, so he would not think to turn back, to rethink what he was doing and consider there might be another way. 

The Plan was fucking stupid, and furthermore, it was unfair. 

So once the Prince left, once the actors were on the stage, waiting for the curtain to open on their performance of destruction, Nyx rose to meet them, flaming kukris in his hands, burning with something other than the King’s borrowed magic. Something older. 

“Not today,” Nyx said, when Glauca lounged at him. “Not today!” 

It spread like wildfire across the city. 

_Not today._

Bright and fierce and defiantly alive. 

The Plan said Insomnia had to fall. Insomnia burned that night, yes, but it was all together a different kind of fire than the one the hand that wrote the plan had intended. And when the Wall fell, and lightning pummeled the ground, Nyx caught sight of Cor riding the edge of it, every bit as wrathful as he was divine. 

So no one could say that it hadn’t been _just_. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out on [DW](https://notavodkashot.dreamwidth.org/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/notavodkashot), if you'd like.


End file.
